Regular readers will be familiar with the Pop Cult and the Death Cult. The Libertarian hysterics in response to rising Christian nationalist calls for a porn ban suggest we need a third entry in our unholy trifecta.
For those who’ve just joined us recently, I and others have made the observation that contemporary political and cultural movements operate like cults. You have the Death Cult, which Progressivism has been all along. It worships unfettered personal indulgence and fanatically seeks to destroy any impediment to its members’ self-defined self-expression. The biggest obstacle in the Death Cult’s way is the truth, so it’s their most hated enemy.
Another cult that’s emerged more recently is the Pop Cult. This is the phenomenon of mostly younger adults–particularly generations X, Y, and Millennials–attempting to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives with Hollywood, Big Two comics, and AAA gaming product. “Don’t ask questions. Just consume product and get excited for next products,” is the Pop Cult’s creed.
One thing both cults have in common is their elevating of personal preferences over the good. Fundamentally, they do away with the concept of objective value altogether and seek validation solely from their choice of weird sexual hangup or entertainment product. Nor will they countenance neutrality. You must join in their liturgies and partake of their sacrifices. Just try pointing out that transsexuals are mentally ill or that Big Brand X is a shame ritual that bilks money from paypigs for the pleasure of insulting them.
Libertarianism is a cult for the same reason. It tries to uphold freedom per se as the highest value. Never mind that freedom lacks intrinsic value and its worth depends wholly on the objective value of what it grants access to. Again, go tell a Libertarian that the purpose of liberty is to pursue the good, and there’s no such thing as freedom to do evil. Then duck.
The crowning irony is that the current dustup arose over porn. It’s truly a case of God making His people’s enemies ridiculous, since Libertarian political aspirations can only be called masturbatory. But for whatever reason they feel the need to cloak their arguments in the fig leaf of free speech instead of just admitting they like to fap.
What we’re dealing with here is a group of people reacting to the dawning knowledge that their ideology has become totally irrelevant. The Left has amply shown that victory comes from gaining government power and ruthlessly wielding that power to reward their friends and punish their enemies. Libertarians and Neocons endlessly tell us that such methods are evil. Yet they never explain their moral criteria. Instead they harp on dissenters for wanting to “Censor speech they disagree with,” all the while assuming there can be no sound cause for disagreement. That’s cult mentality 101.
In reality there’s nothing wrong with government exercising its authority to secure the common good. That’s what government is for, and that’s what Christian nationalists like Nick Fuentes advocate returning to. Question the motives of anyone who vehemently opposes pursuing objective good on the grounds of dubious freedom.
The closest rationale I've seen libertarians express as a moral criteria is the idea that government force is evil. Yet,"before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants." (Hobbes, Leviathan)
Government (force) is evil was a phrase a I grew up with in a Paleocon household and then later during my Mises years (post Libertine college years). It’s a great line, and sounds correct considering the government of the 1990’s and 2000’s, but then I did this crazy thing of reading the history of the West/Christendom but outside of the gatekeepers/schoolmarms. And I learned something, there were good kings and noble aristocrats, and bureaucrats with virtue in the past because they were men and women of deep Christian faith.
Acton was wrong. Power is not intrinsically evil and therefore does not make good men into devils. Liberal Democracy is not evil because of power, it is evil because it rejects God.
Abuse does not militate against legitimate use.
Libertarians are quick to argue, "If we ban porn for having negative effects, then we'd have to ban guns."
That argument is vulnerable to, "If we must suffer porn to exist despite its many evils, we must suffer government to exist for its many goods."
Libertarians are quick to argue, "If we ban porn for having negative effects, then we'd have to ban guns."
Guns have a demonstrable positive use both for the individual and for society as a whole. Does pornography? Not so much. The best anyone could seriously argue for it is that it's a harmless diversion (not taking that position, just saying that's the best possible serious case). But there is significant evidence that it is destructive both at an individual and societal level.
That's what happens when people try to make liberty the sole criterion of legitimacy. They've genuinely lost their ability to tell good from evil.
@Durandel Recommended reading? I'd like to add more to my list.
The Coomer Cult feels like something that, while having its roots in Boomerism, is a Generation X invention in harboring their worst traits in one particular place, much like the Pop Cult is the worst of Gen Y.
Imagine sticking up for an industry that pollutes your brain and thought faculties, abuses its workers, and participates in the drug and human trafficking trade, and thinking you've owned those silly moralizers who believe in ethics and religion that actually work outside of a time and location-specific first world setting.
It's just another form of "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30" only this one's about about men with suits, decent sleeping hours, and combed hair.
The Boomers escaped the worst effects of Coomerism because to them porn is something obtained on the DL from that seedy shop in the red light district. They've heard that every 8-year-old can instantly access smut that would make his Korean War vet grandpa blush, but it just won't sink in.
Boomertarians who still equate porn with free expression are stuck in this old paradigm.
If anything, the argument that anything-goes-porn is "free expression" has massively undermined the status of political free speech.
This is the phenomenon of mostly younger adults–particularly generations X, Y, and Millennials–attempting to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives with Hollywood, Big Two comics, and AAA gaming product.
It appears to me that a religion is largely (not entirely) a set of stories around which we orient our life morally and philosophically. If deprived of a set, people will pick another. Thus, I think it perfectly reasonable to say that some people have made a religion out of Star Wars or Harry Potter. Now, it's a shabby, low-grade religion, but a religion nonetheless. This even applies to people who call themselves Christian but have embedded those other stories far more deeply into their souls.
Be careful what stories you listen to. They can shape you far more than you may be aware.
Hence PulpRev and many of us with young children going back and digging up the old Christian tales for them.
We are surrounded by heathens and pagans. They no longer carve their idols from wood and stone, as a rule. Some of the ancient sorts of paganism (Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and the like) still do, but there are many western pagans who worship bits and bytes and notions that stroke their egos. They code them, draw them, and point cameras at them. We talked about Jeremiah 51 in Sunday school this week. Folks who try talk to trees are silly, but it's an understandable sort of silliness. The pop cult worships nothing at all, I think. I know Pottermoreans and Whovians and folks who probably worship have a dozen different daydreams by turns. Some of them also dabble with neopaganism.
I've posted about this before. Identity is inseparable from human nature, and every identity needs an origin story.
A correction: the verse about speaking to trees is actually Habakkuk 2:18.
We know that a man is a soul with a body, rather than the reverse, but many of those caught in the web of the Pop Cult or the Death Cult do not, particularly if they've received the materialist anti-faith. They may call themselves a-religious, or 'spiritual but not religious,' without understanding that everyone worships something, even if the worshiper cannot name the idol. This is something that saddens me about clever atheists. They proclaim that there is no God, but they have gods nonetheless.
I wonder how we can, as Our Lord came to do, "proclaim liberty to the captives" if those captives cannot even see their chains.
"Hi. My name's Emmett. And I'm a libertarian."
Well, recovering libertarian. Up until about ten years ago, I was a staunch libertarian. I think the shallow idealism of it appealed to me as much as Socialism and Marxism appeal to the Fellow Travelers.
It wasn't until I had my religious re-awakening, if you will, around the time of my children's birth that I left libertarianism behind. I'm not a terribly introspective man, (odd because I am an introvert…) so its possible that I left libertarianism behind before my religious re-awakening. Chicken/Egg… I'm just not sure.
But there were two major libertarian stances that really became the deal breakers:
1) Abortion
My children (fraternal twins) were born very, very premature. So premature in fact that they could have been legally aborted by my wife, without my say so. And yet, when I met them at one day old, tucked away in their isolettes and covered in telemetry wires, it was apparent even then that they had unique, distinct personalities that have stayed they same pretty much to this day.
That shook my shallow, callow libertarian core though I don't know if I had the wherewithal to express it immediately. My children were a gift from God in more ways than one.
2) Legalization of Marijuana
I am somewhat unique. In my youth, I was very, very liberal and anti-law enforcement (raised by two ex-hippies to be a Good Leftist) and (even to this day) have never tried marijuana, let alone the harder drugs. A lot of this is because I watched a number of cousins destroy their lives with substance abuse. And marijuana was usually the first step. I wanted nothing to do with it.
Additionally, the Marijuana Monomania that overtakes the libertarians just got to be too much. Whether they insist they are really just against the War on Drugs or whether they believe THC/CBD/Hemp to be the Miracle Cure for Everything…I just couldn't stand to listen to it anymore.
It wasn't long after all that that I found John C. Wright, a man who I credit with helping bring me back to Jesus Christ, though the man has never met me. And from John C. Wright to Vox Day.
And here we are! Deus Vult, and pass the ammunition.
Your story is more common than you might think, especially amongst us Gen Y and Gen X ers. Now which ammo do you prefer?
I’m a .30-06 kind of guy, especially this time of year. Because venison wrapped in bacon.
Hi, Emmett!
Libertarianism really is a political philosophy for childless people.
May John C. Wright win crowns in heaven!
One day I realized Libertarianism has solid philosophical argument against handing pornography to children.
Done and dusted.
"What if the child consents?" is "You have to go back" for Libertarians.
*NO solid argument.
Hurrah for phone typing and impatience.
I can't speak for him, but I prefer the New International Version, though I also have a soft spot for the NKJV.
Back in high school, the seniors had a politics/civics day in the spring that concluded with a panel featuring a local Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian.
The same Libertarian rep showed up year after year; his outlandish policy positions were legendary among the teachers. He'd steer the discussion to drug legalization or legalized prostitution. Rumor had it that one year he somehow brought up bestiality.
My friends and I joked he was a CIA plant sent to dissuade young people from becoming anti-government Libertarians.
But maybe, just maybe, he was a deep cover Christian s***lord agreeing and amplifying his way to victory?
I'm praying for some deep cover Christian shitlords. We could use them!
While I will admit to having libertarian tendencies, I always understood it wasn't really a workable governing philosophy. Letting the other guy do whatever he wants sometimes leads to him shiting on your lawn. Giving children access to any depravity known to man is the spiritual equivalent of that.
I have the tendency myself. However, even a simply permissive polity can't exist without nations, and over half of Libertarians fail on that first hurdle.
Sad to see the fallout over this topic on twitter.
The Groyper Wars and the porn debate have been like crucifixes presented to Vampire Castle grifters and witches respectively. In the former case, sometimes literally.
I feel sorrow for those who've sided against Christendom out of cowardice, greed, or weakness. I pray for them, but I don't miss their dubious company.